


Sea Change

by pauraque



Category: The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Growing Up, Ocean, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: When Eric was a boy, he knew perfectly well that the creatures of the sea could speak. Now that he's a man, he wants to remember all that he forgot.
Relationships: Ariel/Eric (Disney)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41
Collections: 2020 Disney Animated Movie Exchange (DAM Exchange)





	Sea Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jungle_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/gifts).



> As requested, this fic is based solely on the original movie and doesn't take the sequels into account. Enjoy!
> 
> Thank you to sdk for beta reading. <3

As a boy, Eric begged his father to let him sail.

When his father realized that Eric meant real sailing on the sea, and not just puttering around in a little pleasure yacht around the glass-still lake by the castle, his frown etched deep lines around his mouth and on his brow. The sea was dangerous, no place for a young boy to play—especially not a king's only son.

It was Grimsby whose counsel at last changed the king's mind. He pointed out that it was good for a lad's character to occupy his spare time with something athletic, and if it was something that gave him an understanding of what a day's work was like for the people he would one day rule, then so much the better.

It was also Grimsby who produced a willing captain: A big, grizzle-maned man with broad, rough hands, a keen eye, and a kind voice. He said he'd take the boy on, provided he did the same work as any other, followed orders, and didn't expect to be coddled.

Aboard the merchantman he commanded, the captain taught Eric everything he knew about sailing the sea, and worked him as hard as he'd promised. Eric was a quick, eager study. When the workday was done and he lay in his bunk, though his young arms and back were sore with exhaustion from hauling heavy line, and though the sun's kiss burned across his nose and cheeks, he couldn't stop smiling as the waves rocked him to sleep.

It was a bright spring day and the crew was tacking into a headwind when the dolphins appeared. Silvery-blue and shimmering, slicing through the waves like butter and leaping one after another into the air, a whole pod of them kept easy pace on the port side. All the sailors were cheered to see them—they were said to bring good luck—and happy shouts rang from the crow's nest and the rigging, half-lost in the wind.

Hearing the curious squeaks and garrulous whistles, Eric hopped up onto the gunwale, hanging off a line. "Listen, they're talking to us! They're asking where we're going!" He waved to them and called out over the water: "Hello there! We're bound for Port Stefan. Where are you going?"

The dolphins' laughing voices were hard to make out in the roaring wind, but Eric was sure they'd answered, if only he could hear it.

"Come on down from there, lad," the captain bellowed with a chuckle and a shake of his head. "There's work to be done. No time to play fairyland."

"But they really were talking," Eric said, puzzled, though he obediently jumped down onto the deck. "Couldn't you hear them?"

The captain's face shifted from confusion to consternation. "Maybe you've had too much sun today," he said, and patted Eric on the shoulder with his big, sea-roughened hand.

After that day, Eric found the sailors were more reserved around him, stopping their chatter when he came by and offering smiles that were more condescending than friendly, as if they thought he was a little crazy or dim-witted.

So that was how he learned not to answer back when he heard the beasts of the ocean speaking. He didn't let on that he could understand the cries of the sooty terns when they found a good swirl of fish to feed on at the surface, nor that he felt the whales' resonant voices rumbling like the deepest notes of the cello far beneath the waves, and knew that they were calling each other's mysterious names.

The longer he pretended not to understand, the more his understanding ebbed away, until even he began to be convinced that it had only ever been his imagination. As his body grew taller and stronger, his cheek rougher, he only thought faintly of how strange children can be, how passionate their fantasies, until they grow up into young men and women and put away those childish things.

*

Being married to Ariel was like being married to the sea.

Even when she'd just gotten out of the bath, Eric could still catch the scent of sun and salt when he pressed his face against her bare skin, and when he kissed her hair. There was something ever-moving about her, as though her blood rolled like waves and being still was foreign to her. Her kisses, too, always came with a faint tang of seawater.

And then there was the morning he found her in the courtyard, talking to the birds.

She was standing among the pear trees, barefoot—she liked the way the earth felt on her feet—with her hands clasped behind her back and gazing up at a fat seagull perched on the wall.

"Well, they were probably just upset that you took their food," she said, her voice sparkling with half-suppressed amusement. Then, after a pause, she laughed out loud in disbelief. "Hold onto it better? Scuttle, you can't just take things out of people's hands. It's stealing!"

A knot of nervous discomfort began to tie itself in Eric's stomach as he walked across the courtyard. It wasn't unusual to find Ariel doing strange things. She knew not to comb her hair with silverware anymore, but she never seemed to run out of fiddly little human things that Eric hadn't thought to explain, like how you're not supposed to go out the window even if it's open and you can fit through it. But seeing her talking to a bird as if it could talk back dredged up peculiar truths that Eric had tried not to remember.

"Hey," he said, placing his hand on the small of her back. "What are you up to out here?"

She turned, and her sea-blue eyes lit up. "Oh, I was just talking to my friend. Eric, this is Scuttle. Scuttle, well, you know Eric, of course."

The bird bobbed its head and let out a strangled squawk.

"Uh," Eric said.

"Can't you hear him?" Ariel prompted after a moment, perplexed.

"What exactly am I supposed to be hearing?" Eric asked slowly, looking from his wife to the seagull and back.

The bird fluffed itself up and clacked its beak indignantly.

"Be nice, Scuttle," Ariel admonished with a laugh. Then, to Eric: "You really can't understand him? He can understand you."

"I don't know what to tell you," Eric said, feeling some heated mixture of embarrassment and hope. He rubbed the back of his head. "Humans can't talk to animals."

"You talk to Max," she pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but he doesn't talk back!"

"Oh," Ariel said. "I always thought it was just me who couldn't understand him. I would have said something, but I didn't want to butt into your conversations."

Eric found he couldn't think of anything to say to that. Nor could he bring himself to try again to talk to the seagull, who gazed at him sidelong with one sharp, dubious yellow eye.

*

One day, the storm-petrels heralded a heavy rain. When it came, the sky turned so dark that the lamplighters had to come out early in the afternoon, hunched in their coats and climbing their rain-slick ladders with the utmost care.

When Eric realized that Ariel was nowhere to be found in the castle, he went looking for her in the town, past the overflowing fountain and down one misty lane after another. At last he found her bent over and staring fascinatedly into the water collecting in a wheel rut, transfixed by the overlapping ripples that patterned outward from each drop of rain. She was barefoot and her hair and clothes were dripping wet. Of course she had no notion of water being something to protect yourself from, nor any understanding of why the noble ladies in colorful gowns looked twice at her as they hurried into their coaches with servants holding waxed parasols over their heads.

After some time Eric coaxed her back indoors, and soon they were bathed and dried and wedged in together in the over-large armchair in front of a roaring fire. He pulled the blanket cozily around them; his feet still felt chilled after squelching all over town in wet boots, but Ariel was relaxed and content in his arms. She never seemed bothered by the weather, having lived all her life in the deep, cold sea.

"So you can talk to everything that lives near the water?" he asked.

"Mm-hm. Well, everything that wants to talk," she corrected herself thoughtfully.

He had to admit that made a kind of sense. "What about humans? We don't always live by the sea. Can all the merfolk talk to us, or is it something special about you?"

She considered this for a minute, gazing into the flames of the hearth. "I don't think I'm special," she concluded. "I think anyone could have come to the surface and seen what I saw in you. Most people just never tried because it was forbidden... They were afraid of what people would think."

"I'm guessing that wasn't a problem you ever had," he teased.

She giggled and nudged him in the chest. "No, not really."

They cuddled closer together, enjoying the crackling heat of the fire, the easy warmth of one another, and the soothing rhythm of Max's snores from where he lay curled up on the rug.

As he fell asleep, Eric's mind replayed the image of Ariel strolling barefoot down rainy streets, greeting side-eyed stares with a cheery wave and a smile.

*

The rain had given way to a stark blue sky with only a few high wisps of curly white. The harbor was calm and the wind so light that Eric struggled a little with the sailing dinghy, relying on Ariel to help balance the weight while he took care with the sails. She'd taken easily to boating, intuiting whether a small craft wanted weight stern or aft, and doing well with the rudder when it was needed.

When they were a league or so off the coast, Ariel carelessly began to sing, apparently out of sheer happiness. She turned her face to the sun, eyes closed and letting her siren song echo off the cliffs where the black and white murres nested. Eric wasn't much of a singer, himself, but he hummed along under his breath as pelicans danced above them in slow spirals.

It wasn't long until the dolphins came. They circled the dinghy curiously, slowly, not tipping it too hard. Ariel took over the jib, and Eric leaned over carefully to trail his hand in the glittering water.

The dolphins swam up beneath it one after another, brushing against his fingertips. Their skin was smooth and sleek, like oiled India rubber. One, bolder than the rest, rolled over onto its back and invited Eric to scratch its pale belly. He obliged and grinned, thinking of Max.

The dolphin tilted around and peered at Eric. Its dark, almost-human eye was keen and intelligent. Expectant. Eric glanced at Ariel, who smiled and gave a vigorous nod of encouragement.

Eric cleared his throat, shrugged off his self-consciousness like a too-heavy coat, and said softly, "Hello. Can you... Can you understand me?"

The dolphin let out a cackle of delight and a whistled word that, for the first time since he was ten, Eric heard as clear as the clean blue sea:

_Yes!_


End file.
